


Trouble and Red Dust

by devilinthedetails



Category: PIERCE Tamora - Works, Tortall - Tamora Pierce
Genre: Drought, Famine - Freeform, Gen, Hill Country, Scanran War, bandits
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-25
Updated: 2020-10-25
Packaged: 2021-03-09 06:28:34
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,601
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27199193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/devilinthedetails/pseuds/devilinthedetails
Summary: The life of Gilab Lofts is defined by trouble and red dust. Or how Gilab Lofts becomes the bandit Kel meets in Page and encounters again in Lady Knight.
Comments: 2
Kudos: 11





	Trouble and Red Dust

**Author's Note:**

> Somewhat inspired by the discussions about hill country that have taken place on Goldenlake lately but also just because I have a soft spot for Gil.

Trouble and Red Dust

The hill country was red dust for as far as the eye could see. There was no wheat to be heard rustling in the wind whistling through the cliffs. Most of it had withered into dust in the drought, and what hadn’t withered to dust had been claimed at harvest by the lord for his own table and to pay his own land tax to the Crown. That left Gil with nothing left to pay for the land and cottage which he lent from his lord in a week’s time when the rent would be due at the manor court. 

Gil, his wife, and his children would be thrown out into the streets without even the leaking shelter of their cottage roof. They would be dependent on the charity of their neighbors, and charity was as lean as tightening waists during drought and famine years. They would have to beg for food, and they would still get nothing because there was nothing for any of their neighbors to give them. He could refuse to appear at the manor court where his rent was due, but that would only get him declared an outlaw for refusing a court summons made in his lord’s name. 

Despondently, Gil snatched up a stick and drew absent-minded, meaningless figures in the dust. As the dust whirled in cones around his heels, he wondered if the dust could be mixed with water to form a pitiful porridge with which to feed his family. Then he remembered with ever mounting despair that there was no water to be had for miles around either. The wells and rivers of this section of hill country had run dry. Thirst would probably claim his wife and children before hunger did. Thirst would likely claim him as well, but he didn’t care about that so much as he did the fates of his wife and children. 

Hopelessness must have been etched on his features because his elderly neighbor, Hal, crossed the dry gully that had once been a stream separating their fields. Hal’s face was weather-beaten and wrinkled with his mouth a hollow devoid of teeth. 

“Ever since I was young, outlaw bands have roamed this land and swelled their ranks whenever there was a famine or drought,” Hal commented. 

“I know that,” Gil responded shortly. He had heard that Breakbone Dell, the meanest dog-skinner this side of the Drell, was in the area and looking for men to add to his numbers.

“When I was a boy, I dreamed of joining them, and living the bandit’s life, but soon enough my father whipped that idea out of me.” Hal cackled at the memory of the thrashing, the sound emerging strangely from the toothless cave of his mouth. 

“I don’t want to become an outlaw.” Gil shook his head, thinking that he might not have any choice about becoming an outlaw. It might be the only way he could feed his starving family. “Why would any man wish to become an outlaw?” 

“Better to ask, why would any man wish for the law-abiding life of farmer or tradesman with hungry children to feed, a wide to scold him, and the lord’s rents to make him miserable?” Hal’s words struck too near Gil’s heart. “The bandits live as free men without those cares.” 

“If it’s so wonderful”—Gil shot Hal a skeptical glance. Growing up in the hill country with the constant, looming twin threats of famine and drought, he doubted anything that sounded too good to be true, because that was often just what it was: too cursed good to be true. “Why haven’t you joined the ranks of Breakbone Dell, huh?” 

“Me? What use would a bandit gang have for me?” Hal spat a wad of phlegm into the red dust, and Gil marveled that he had the water to waste in such a fashion when Gil’s own mouth had gone dry as the rivers and wells. “Breakbone Dell welcomes only the young and able-bodied men and their families or men who have some useful skill. They wouldn’t have me, but a fellow like you, Gil. You might be young and strong enough to be of interest to them.” 

“I don’t want any trouble with bandits.” Gil swiped at his sweaty brow, cursing the sun that had dried his wheat and now made him sweat away any moisture left in his weakening body. “Neither do my wife and children.” 

“Bandits don’t always mean trouble.” Hal grunted and shrugged. Such grunting and shrugs comprised a large portion of the conversation amongst the rugged natives of hill country. “Sometimes they mean salvation.” 

“I should think there’d always be trouble amongst bandits.” Gil’s forehead furrowed like freshly tilled soil, and he stroked his chin. “With no law to guide them, they must fight endlessly—arguing over booty and bullying each other—as the strong seek to lord it over the weak.” 

“Nonsense.” Hal hacked up another wad of spit. “If they wanted that sort of life, they’d stay in the villages—in our world. They want to escape our world. That’s why they flee out of the reach of the law and live by their own laws and customs. That’s why they don’t fight over the spoils but divide everything equally.” 

“Every man takes the same share?” Gil found himself wanting to believe that were the case even though he had heard many stories of bandits who died fighting like dogs for a scrap of meat or a gnawed at bone. 

“That’s what I just said, isn’t it?” Hal squinted peevishly at him, shading his eyes from the harsh rays of sun baking the dust in the fields. 

“Even the leader?” Gil thought the idea was outlandish, impossible, but wonderful. The very notion that there could be a place or a people who divided everything equally among themselves seemed like an answer to his prayers. 

“Especially the leader!” Hal exclaimed, his tone suggesting that Gil was so ignorant he must’ve been born squalling yesterday. “How do you think a man becomes the leader of a bandit gang?” 

“He draws the long stick,” Gil guessed because it didn’t seem as if Hal would continue unless he made some sort of answer. 

“The others choose him by vote.” Hal paused for emphasis. “If the leader should ever cheat them, abuse them, or claim special privileges as our nobles do, soon enough he finds himself without a head, and the bandits pick a new leader from their ranks. It’s not like our world where a man whose above you is above you all your life and there’s nothing you can do about it because that’s how you both were born and you’ve no say in the matter. The bandits live a free life we can only dream of in this dust.” 

“But they pay a price,” pointed out Gil, the worst fears he had of the consequences he would face if he embraced the bandit lifestyle bursting out of him like water overflowing a hill gully in spring. “They’re outcasts. They’re not protected by the law, and if they’re caught, they’ll be hanged or sentenced to years of hard labor for the Crown that nobody survives anyway. And what about the terrible things they do? They kill and rob innocent people, and sometimes they even kidnap people for ransom too. Who could live at peace with themselves doing that day after day even if it was to put food in the bellies of their wives and children?” 

“I never said they weren’t lawbreakers.” Hal shrugged again before crossing back into the dust of his own field. “Why do you think my father beat the idea out of me when I spoke of joining them as a boy?” 

That question reverberated inside Gil’s head for the rest of the day and into the night. In the morning, it was the sight of the ragged clothing of his children hanging loose about their thin ribcages that made him seek out the hiding place of Breakbone Dell to join his ranks. 

Life as a bandit wasn’t glorious. It was shameful work that spilled blood into the red dust of hill country, but it fed his family until he was captured and sentenced to more years of hard labor than even the strongest man could survive. 

In chains and under the cruel lash of an overseer, he repaired dirty roads and mined riches he could never keep from dark mines. When war broke out with Scanra and the realm needed soldiers even if those soldiers were convicts, Gil volunteered to join the army in exchange for a reduction of his sentence. He knew the convict soldiers would be used as disposable bodies by the commanders who would despise them, but he didn’t care. He would surely have died on the roads and in the mines if he remained there. It was better to risk death on the battlefield for a chance at being able to see his family again—if they hadn’t starved without him to provide for them. 

He didn’t expect to serve under the girl—now a woman and a knight—who had been responsible for his arrest. He didn’t expect to speak in her defense in a crowded mess hall. Nor did he expect to follow her into Scanra on a rescue mission or find any redemption there. Lives seldom went as planned. Gil’s certainly hadn’t. Nor did deaths. That was why he died on Scanran soil, fighting to destroy Blayce the Gallan, far away from the red dirt and trouble of hill country.


End file.
